Social media forums allow participants to interact with one another regarding particular topics and purposes. Individuals and companies can host, join, and/or participate in social media forums to market and facilitate the sale of products and services. Social media forums can provide a platform that allows marketers to quickly interact and reach out to customers in a cost-effective manner. Posting on a social media forum at an advantageous time can be important for multiple reasons. For instance, posting an inappropriate message at an inappropriate time can destroy hard-built brand images. Additionally, the effectiveness of a marketing post can depend upon the timing of the post with respect to a prime time of a social media forum when the community of users associated with the forum is most active. The effectiveness of a marketing post can similarly depend upon the relative timing of other posts (both marketing posts and other posts) as well as other time-dependent factors.
Determining an advantageous time to make a marketing or other type of post can depend on the content of the post, the community, and the community's behavior and activities. The participants in a community may generally favor certain content at certain times of day more than at other times of day. For example, weekend sales announcements might be most effective to a particular community when posted on Friday nights. The same announcement posted on any other day, comparatively, might not garner as much attention.
Current techniques for posting on social media forums do not adequately account for potential differences in the level of interest over time.